about almost a pound, you know. Always happy to know, you know, of more freedom that's coming to this country because, you know, we can lose it so quickly. And so things like that, I said, you know, bring it on. Let the people decide what it is that they want. And of course with that, you know, if somebody wants to take Lipitor, then, you know, they know the, you know, which is an over-the-counter, well, prescription medication. If somebody wants to take Lipitor or something like that, they've got to know the risks. And if somebody is okay with that, then they're going to go ahead and take their vitamin C pills or whatever. And it's the same thing with medical marijuana or any other medication. Check out our website at www.libertiesguardian.com. That website again is www.libertiesguardian.com. Go to the website and check out our selection today. We all need to prepare ourselves. You might have the food, water, gold and silver, but ask yourself, are you truly prepared? That's why you need to visit mainmilitary.com. MainMilitary.com carries everything you need. Gas masks, fire starter kits, high-capacity magazines, chemical suits, military surplus items, and much more. Do you own a firearm? MainMilitary.com has a large selection of pistols and rifles suited for your needs. Are your local stores sold out of ammunition? Call or visit them today for prices on hard-to-find ammo and bulk ammo orders. You don't need to worry about having a military surplus store in your area because MainMilitary.com is the only store you'll ever need all from the comfort of your computer. Visit them online today at mainmilitary.com. That's main, like the state, military.com. For future generations, this legacy we gave. In this, the land of the free and home of the brave. The freedoms we secured for you, we hoped you'd always keep. But tyrants labored endlessly while your parents were asleep. Your freedom's gone, your courage lost, you're no more than a slave. In this, the land of the free and the brave. You buy permits to travel and permits to own a gun. Permits to start a business or to build a place for one. On land that you believe you own, you pay a yearly rent. Although you have no voice in saying how the money is spent, your children must attend a school that doesn't educate, and your Christian values can't be taught according to this state. You read about the current news in a regulated press, and you pay a tax you do not owe to please the IRS. Your money is no longer made of silver nor of gold. You trade your wealth for paper so your life can be controlled. You pay for crimes that make our nation turn from God and shame. You've given government control to those who do you harm so they could burn down churches and send me farm and keep our country, keep the men of God in jail, harass your fellow countrymen while corrupted courts prevail. Your public servants don't uphold the solemn oaths they've sworn. And your daughters visit doctors so their children will be Your leaders send artillery and guns to foreign shores and send your sons to slaughter fighting other people's wars. Can you regain the freedoms for which we fought and died? Or don't you have the courage or the faith to stand with pride? And are there no more values for which you will fight to save? Or do you wish your children to live in fear? O sons of the Republic, arise, take a stand, defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the land. Preserve our great republic and eat God given right. And pray to God to torture freedom burning bright. As I awoke he vanished in the mist for once he came. His words were true, not free, but we have ourselves to blame. For even now as tyrants trample, each God given right, we only watch and tremble, too afraid to stand and fight. If he stood by your bedside in a dream while you were asleep and wondered what remains of the freedoms he'd fought to keep, What would be your answer if he called out from the grave? The many places where the state of Jefferson will affect once California. Working on it, everybody wants California to leave, but they ain't taking the rest of the state with them. Oh no, no, no, it ain't gonna. It is a beautiful Tuesday evening. We had of course gray all through the day. Not a surprise considering it's winter time, but we of course just got a little dusting, a little bit of snow here and there. It'll flick here and a little flick there and remind us that winter as in gaudyware, otherwise bare ground for the most part, a little bit of patches of snow here and there in the shade, and a steady breeze to suck more of the moisture up and bring the temperature down a tad, which is what's happening. So for everybody out there, again, pay attention to the situation, the environment. Be cautious if you're driving around now, because if you see, well, shiny on the road and slick, that means it is ice. Pretty well guaranteed. Anyway, before we depart, do we have time with us? I keep hearing additional noise so I've got to make sure. Okay, very good. The day today, well, it is... Do we have Larry with us? Tuesday, the 27th of December, it is the 8th year of Openthebian Socialist and Soviet Socialist occupation of America with a K-2016, old earth calendar. 16 year of battle, year of... busy again communications Tuesday. A reminder if you haven't tested those pieces of radio equipment you got under the Christmas tree or any other electronics you need to break them out of the packages. You need to put the power supply to them or put the battery to them and you need to make sure they work. This is especially critical because it would be your one chance to take them back if there's a problem and that's not an issue just make sure you do it right test it now so that you won't have to cry later. Why is this not working out of the box? Sure, because for everybody, again, take the time, plug in the equipment, break the batteries out of the kit there, but if the batteries, if you do have a problem, don't just assume, okay? Do not just assume. that the system is going to work for you. That it's the batteries that are working fine and the radio equipment doesn't. Always have a second set of totally different batteries on hand, especially with stuff that's in bubble pack. You don't know how long it's actually been there. You don't know when they actually packed it up over in China and where they finally decided to move it from the warehouse over here to the US or how long it stayed in a secondary warehouse. So just in case, have some brand new American Made, or at least an American named battery, they're on standby. Of course, you can also use your rechargeables where you know, as long as you know that the charger is taking and making a set, in other words, providing the juice and it's being spatteries. So there's several factors here. Don't just assume when you plug in the first set of batteries, everything's right and rained with the batteries and the radio is giving you trouble. With a separate and independent system. Anyway, do we hear blurry there? I hear some noise. Okay, well who do we have? Callers jump in there. I've got two of them doing in there. I've got to be kind of careful because there's a lot of people on those channels. I really didn't think about that but it took us out real quick out of the area. Consider, just like CB radio, we're used to cell phones now and both with CB radio and with FRS you're going to have more people on the radio technology progressively, especially if we get into an economic downturn. Guys, people are used to squawking and yapping on cell phones the way they used to squawking and yapping on CBs. Pretty well parallel program there as far as the end result. So with all of the situations that we see that are developing with the economic downturns, the gold confiscation, the currency confiscations, As they start to shift things over to strip from your bank accounts, whatever resource you have, well, people are going to be dropping things. They simply won't have any choice. And there'll be a moment where some will actually realize, oh, wait a minute. I got those radios in my garage, or in my car, or in my closet. Or they're going to run out and buy them last minute, which is OK. But because of that, remember you're going to have to go up and down the dial and pick frequencies out also that are less active. Some are more popular than others. It's purely, again, an area thing. Some areas they were even quite, shall we say, channel possessive in that, well you don't miss other channels because that's for French mid-labs crew, you know, and the guys over here. That has gone on in the past with radio. I don't care if it's ham radio or whatever, or CB radio works the same way. Now, this is why FRS is one of several solutions. And again, most people are not thinking about marine radio, but that's the other overlapping technology. In fact, because fewer people are on water, on the boats, or whatever, they're not going to be thinking about the idea of using marine radio as things get cluttered at one end for a period of time. That's not going to last forever. I'll tell you two reasons. Number one, when the power fails on the wall, rechargeables are going to be an issue. And very few people, the percentages are lower and lower with regard to people thinking ahead. They're mostly thinking the power is coming out of the wall or I'm going to go buy some more batteries. Well, if neither of those is possible because A, the truck stops showing up and B, the wall electricity fails, then a percentage are going to drop off very quickly because they'll continue to use the radios with no discipline. Because of this, they will consume whatever energy they have left and then 1x1, 10x10, 12x20, 50 or 100, they will go out. Now there will be a battle for batteries and gasoline and all kinds of stuff later on if people get goofy stupid, but a lot of people will simply give up on the idea because the area will go dark almost at the same time across the board. Many people not looking ahead. having variations in how far they can proceed with using their equipment. This is the advantage again of big butt radios like the CBs or the marine radios because an emergency batteries and solar cells are going to be out there in force and it doesn't mean that you can't charge those smaller pieces of equipment but most people won't invest in that. If they have FRS radios they may not have anything else and they're not going to invest in alternate power because Well, they didn't necessarily even buy them. They may have been given as a gift just like you're talking about. So this is a matter of diminishing percentages with regard to competition. But it also means that those of you who do have the energy and the batteries and the power and the gasoline are a target for all of those who feel that they, whatever you have, should be theirs, which is why the parallel investment is in arms and ammunition, of course. Yeah, those are pretty cool. Again, most all of them have the ability both to either work on independent frequencies where they've required license, or you do have the option to also scramble slash encrypt. Now that would help with regard to people interfering with whatever broadcast you're involved with, but in many cases, remember even encryption will kind of give the wink of the nod to the locals that somebody's using the radio. So while encryption again is useful, If you're trying to create the illusion of non-activity or minimizing activity, then still using the radio but with encryption is not necessarily your first best choice of things to do as they say. Keep the system offline across the board and keep things quiet. And then schedule your radio broadcasts. If you're going to operate, remember schedule and set up times for monitoring. Go ahead. Because it's just another way and you want to charger and you've got to have that sold out solar charger to go along with because like you say, you've got to be gone. You've got to have an alternate source of power. Those sold out solar chargers, I mean what? You're going to charge your radios in a half an hour. One of the things that I pointed out recently here, again we just hooked up one during the one hour break. I just hooked another one up, finished it. $15 Harbor Freight, they're actually the visor size, the ones you could hook up, the original wheels were built to be clipped to your visor. You put them down, pull down the visor and they would be out facing out of the windshield. And you plug the other end into your ash tray lighter and you got a trickle charger all through the day, non-stop charging up your car battery. Well you can do it with any other battery you want to, guys. It doesn't have to be hooked up to a car. as long as it's a 12 volt system and then of course you can also feed off that and or use it to recharge other systems if you know what you're doing hooking up a multi charger multi option charger multi output. They are readily available. The other consideration is shortwave AM FM weather channel crank and solar radios because if you'll notice all of them now have an umbilicus, have hookups for all the basic phone systems, or in quote unquote your cell phones, but that also means you can hook them up to power up and recharge your FRS batteries, your rechargeable batteries if you know what you're doing. Many of them actually have a built in charger box where you can hook up your AA's, AAA's, and even 9 volt batteries. If you shop around you'll find them for a pretty good price and they are definitely worth picking up. They're worth investing in and I highly recommend all of them. Solar panels of course, well hey, like I said, as long as there's sunlight, there's free electricity. How much you're going to get is a matter of how much you pay attention while enduring the process of the day when you're charging. That's the most critical. caller, who do we have? We might just have a patient listener there too. Okay. Anyway, we've got to throw some ear candy in. We're almost to the bottom of the hour here, guys, for everybody listening. We're going to cover stripper clips in a minute too, because you asked about that. We are headed towards the new year. Actually, today's date, one more time. It's the 27th of December, guys. They've only got so many days to mess with us in the 2016 year of battle, year of storm. and the contest will continue in 2017. It ain't going to slow down. It's going to continue to be pretty exciting, I believe, period. The bad guys are not happy, not in any way, shape, or form. They did not go where they wanted to go with the election. Hillary was, you know, was of course going to be the winner across the board. It didn't work out that way and, well, the rest is history. So, what we're going to do from a piece from where I finally realized where I'd heard this before. This particular request and uh oh my god Southern California Sopranos oh my god oh oh I busted a nail oh oh my sudden motion in the back you gotta get me back anyway. They shot me something else here it's like oh that's disgusting. California you know Sopranos anyway. This particular piece, Little Railroad series, remember? Helen Wheels, of course. For Janice and for... Oh, come on, Danielle. Janice and Danielle. Daniel? Let's see, Alan. Daniel Alan. Anyway, for the girls making their request. I've got it this morning, as a matter of fact, and I had this one quick enough, actually I was thinking about playing it this morning, but we got into a conversation. We don't slow down and we don't usually change the direction here, but we are heading towards the bottom of the hour break and we're going to make it from this end because I already got it pretty well queued up, I think. Happens here, I got to find out for sure. There we go. Okay, and Casey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Bratland Bone. And for the girls, hey, you're going to take control of the station here in a moment. Here we go. Don't say we don't do it, because we do it on a regular basis. If you'd like to send in a music request, providelibertyat. Another question just came up, hard case or soft case of the radios. Well, I'll tell you what, it's kind of a combination. I'll tell you, there's some really good bags to use for carrying in your gear. There's a number of different sizes and types, also cargo bags for CD carriers and such. Why? Well a lot of them have hard shells. CDs have to be protected. So the neat thing is you've got a nice hard shell with an armor padding, nylon or a cordura inside and out. Typically cordura with better ones, almost all of them, every one I've picked up. Tactically they're in black but I found them in gray, gray green slash the sage green which you find as part of the coloration for the ACU camouflage, you know that sage green. Oil work, every one can be made to work. If all fails break out the spray paint and change up the pattern a little bit. The big thing is that again you've got the armored bag so you can keep your radio in there, your personal radio, even some of your charger equipment, depends on the size bag you're choosing. Where you're going to want to fit it is typically on your backpack to support your personal radio and it's the change out gears, spare batteries, maybe an extension mic, there's all kinds of things, headsets, throat mics, everything is available for the little FRS or the CB radios or again all the handhelds no matter what they are. If you go to DX.com for instance, the throat mics are available for every microphone, connect, fixture that exists. Now beware and pay attention because the pictures all look the same. And you have to read the instructions to make sure that you get the right model. Pay attention first to what model you have, and then identify what it is that fits the model you have. And find it by reading. Don't just look at the picture and go, oh, that's what I want. Mark told me to get one of these. It doesn't fit. No, Mark told you to read the instructions. Pay attention to the description in the advertisements and get the right piece of equipment for the job. Very simple. Prior pumper planning prevents piss poor performance. Now as far as the bags go, there's a number of different sizes there that work pretty well. We got a caller. Who do we have? There's that. Very good. Jump in there, sir. What do you got? Merry Christmas, buddy. I missed you. Let you know. Batteries, you've been talking about re-fargables and stuff. All these, I can't be caved, but apparently he was not this week, so we missed it. But we haven't missed the opportunity in some locations. They have eight A or eight AAA at all these, for those who have all these in their area, for $799. That's $1 apiece. These are 1,400 milliamp hours. They are 1.2 volt, like most of the nickel metal hydride batteries are. They are 1.2 volt. And they also have a charger with two AA's or two AAA's. You know, it's got four, it's got two of each with the charger, also 799. The cheapest I found, I'd been looking for rechargables and wanting to get some, and I found these and I said, oh, holy mackerel, I grabbed them and I grabbed a whole bunch of them. From five local all these near me to two cases in three days. Of course, that was right before Christmas, and a lot of people were buying them for things. Did you know about this? And he said, no, but understand that the one point and things like that or anything that has to do with electronics. I'm not making the assumption. Any electronics or that nature that are more critical to the voltage being dead before anywhere near dead of 75% on a 1.2 volt may or something like that. Any case, I don't know these, get the last, is that my, all these volt tonight? And there were still apparently they had more in the back room. They said, yeah, these are the last ones we had. They still had two cases. So they are available for a dollar a battery, all get out, or $4 for the charger, and you get two double A's and two triple A's for a dollar a piece, and it's still the same set of 90's. Still a good price. Yeah, that's an excellent price. And especially for the next wave of rechargeables that you have, if you've already got equipment in the radio, then this gives you the second wave to run that many more hours without any interference, minimal change out time. Actually, that's the best price I've been looking right now. As I've said earlier this year, kind of like everything else from China, the roll up price wise has been consistent and there's been no great sales as far as stuff coming down. But in rechargeable batteries, two or three years ago guys, we could find them for as little as $0.32, $0.29 a unit. which then went to 58 cents, which then we know the usual story, 75. And now they're pretty much around 98 to $1.18 a month, a dollar a unit. And that's the wholesale end if you buy a big pile of them. This is where you can go right to the store and buy what you can afford. In other words, if you can't buy 50 or 100 at a time, you're not going to get the dollar price. So the way to do it, well, these little pocket sails like this are where we make up the difference and you got the charger. I grab every charger, every yard sail. I see one that's in the freebie box. I got three of them from one yard sail alone. And any time, just tack them and rack them. Put them in the box, put them away. You may not use them right now, but you'll figure out what you need to do with them later. And again, you've got something to work with, something to adapt. You have to have components and building components. Battery cases, battery holders for charging guys. rather than having to improvise and hope that it works, you got something that's factory made and you can adapt it to your needs modifying in the field. Anything else jump in there please. There actually is something. Being the industry that I'm working in, we occasionally come across battery placement holders. The type of thing where you would put the batteries into a door lock or something like that. And it is a pre-made plastic device just like you would have inside your remote or anything else that you would immediately place your flashlight batteries or whatever. All connected in series, three batteries in a row for making colloidal silver or anything like that. These things are a heck of a lot better than trying to solder or figure out your own way to make these batteries that would generate enough power to generate your colloidal silver. Keep your eyes out for those. Even if you find it in something that's fragged, I've got a broken helicopter or something like that, a battery pack in it. Well, especially the toys because that's just it. They're not so expensive that people can't afford to play with them, but also cheap enough people will toss them when something goes wrong with them. And so you've got something virtually new with a brand new battery pack in it. And that battery holder is probably the best made part of the whole unit. Yeah. Exactly, so it provided relatively consistent power until whatever gimmicky part of it or ill engineered part finally gave up the ghost. And typically with the little RC toys, it's either going to be the gear drive or how it's improperly connected to the shaft and it starts to spin and nobody knows what to do with that. or with the helicopters, the rotors get smacked into something and either it breaks a blade or it breaks pin control or a shaft, like the shaft connectors. Now, little shaft connectors are available. The little spring looks like a mock spring system. Those are actually designed to break, and you can buy them by the little canister like 40, 50 of them at a time if you want to, if you're really serious about that little RC toy you're playing with, even the cheapest ones. Chances are though as we see with most China sports stuff, you're lining up and finding the part, the right one, harder than heck and most people don't even want to bother because for what they paid for it like you said, they'll toss it in the battery pack and the controller out and go find another one. And so the controller has some batteries in it, the RC toy has some batteries in it and I doubt that they're that old. Most people like you said in a lot of situations just buy them as gimmicks just keep them busy for a bit. something for you know they're out and about so they play and they fiddle with it and then something happens to it or they don't even in many cases nothing even wrong with it they just toss it. Well I'm bored of that one. I'll go get another one when I go to where my next place where I'm going is and this is especially true with construction crews and people where they rent you know places for a bit and they stop and park for a while but they don't want to carry any baggage or anything with them they'll leave everything behind that's a gimmick or a toy or something that's a little excess And somebody else picks it up if they're smart. So the cool thing is you can find this stuff laying around. Go ahead. And we are smart. That's it. I'll let you go. Very good. Thank you, sir. Good to hear from you. I'll talk to you sometime soon. And again, for everybody, well, we are, well, we've got about another 15 minutes if you'd like to call in. If you have any requests for music or anything you want to play down in the air, we actually did some other talking three and four minute pieces here over the last couple of weeks for a reason. Actually, I like the message, so we make sure we put them out. You can email us at liberty at provide.net. That's liberty at provide.net. Put music request and AM, if you want, the AM of the morning, or you can put P request AM and music request PM. and whichever choice for the title and then you can send the message with whatever link or you've got any whatever you want to have played we'll track it down. Now if you want it for AM and PM mark it that way too and if we can we'll try to play it both in the morning and the afternoon or catch it one way or another. We figure you're probably listening to both and that's why you don't care. But it's real simple Liberty provide.net. Another thing here real quick is emergency radio communications. Kind of handy when the wet weather, cold weather situation we're in. CB radio is still your best emergency radio system if you have an FRS network, of course, it's common sense to carry that too. I have more than one way than no way. Well Mark, I have my cell phone. Whoops and bloop, it fell on the toilet. Or whoops, it already got wet and. Or it could be you just left it at home charging because you're just going to be out and about for a bit and straight over there and straight back, which is smart. I mean, number one, we can live without the cell phone, but for emergency purposes, needless to say, the cell phone has kind of filled in the space for the moment. But if things get a little more, shall we say, entertaining, power goes down with the grid. It's the independent radio network that's going to get the message to your friends that you need help. It's not going to be the phone system. That, of course, was an issue with the whole thing with New Orleans. Remember with Katrina? And it was catch as catch can. And then the system was shut down by FEMA. And you can expect the same thing to happen again. So you better make sure that you're prepared for that by having what you need in hand ready to roll. And again, test it. Actually, you've got to run this equipment. If you're really going to be serious about that. You've got to run the equipment to make sure that you understand it. Another thing in an emergency, and I've seen this over and over again, I've got the most expensive radio. Yes, yes, you do. And it has lots of extra bells and whistles and knobs and extra lighting, and it's harder to use. And in fact, one little mistake, because you assume a setting is where it's supposed to be, because some of the dials aren't as readable as they should be, And what happens is you keep trying to broadcast out and this stinking radio isn't working and it's, oh the radio's working just fine. You just didn't adjust your settings properly. And you in fact blocked your own signal. That has happened many, many, many times where I've walked up and somebody said this radio doesn't work. And the squelch will be ill set or somebody's on upper or lower side band. They're playing with the knobs and this looks neat. This looks neat. And so they're talking to somebody, but they're not talking to the people they need to talk to. And not the least of which is always pay attention and look closely at that frequency counter. Is it channel 15 or channel 19? Oh, you mean you kind of screwed up on that one, eh? And that happens just as often as not. Yo, I'm on 15. That looks like 19 to me. In fact, that looks like 16. Wait a minute. I mean, yep, that's 16. Well, you were talking to someone, you weren't talking to any of us. So again, be patient. You got to stay focused and be an adult on this and in, you know, getting constantly test out. Go ahead, caller. Yeah, you know, Mark, you know, you got a real good point there because I go into a lot of CB shops only because, you know, I kind of have to because I've got radio. I've got CB radios. And there's other drivers in there and they're saying you can, they'll be looking at a 10 meter radio and they'll say something like, well, you know, I used to have one of these, but I got rid of it because there's so many damn dials. I don't even, you know, you met, it's just, they're so hard to use. It's ridiculous. You know, you hear that all the time. They're trying to drive their truck and they're reaching up and there's like 9 million dials on the 10 meter and they're trying to figure out how the hell to use it. They're the same mud. The simpler the better. Some of these radios are just ridiculous. It's like a 747 airline cockpit. There's so many buttons and dials, it'll drive you nuts. One of the things to settle that is fingernail polish. If you do have a more sophisticated radio, there's a basic rule. What you do is you mark what is your zero setting on the chassis with a dot of whatever really bright fingernail polish. And then you mark when you get the dials all set. Mark them with a fingernail polish line and that way when you look at the radio you know that you've got to get this lined up, this lined up, and this... there's typically where they're not... even if they are, for instance, an index control. That's where they go click, click, click, click, kind of like your channel control. With anything else like that, you mark it. You mark it on the chassis. Well, does it look real pretty? Well, it's no matter how fancy you are and how smart you are. Yeah, that's a really good idea. I've never even heard anyone even talk about that. That's a damn good idea. And the fingering of polish here, you can pick a color that will jump out at you because a lot of them have facial chrome. And that has all kind of dangly lights from all your other LED stuff in the cab. And the idea behind it is that you can easily do a quick look and go, OK, everything is set. Well, let's see. Squelch and trim is set. Let's see. Oh, look. I've got a big problem over here. Now, the sideband, really, the only thing you do is you might want to mark, say, standard CB. Upper and lower sideband, you select to isolate a call if you want to talk to people. And you don't want to clutter up the primary line. That's the beautiful thing about single sideband. You can go above or below that and then up or down the dial a little bit and you're completely separate from everybody. Know your areas where the frequencies are typically quieter and that varies from region to region depending on where you are state to state. But the single sideband is great for creating a privacy mode. It's not that a lot of radios don't have it, it's just that most people really don't bother using it. And those that do really are usually quite serious about their radio, and they're going to mean a very narrow, specific frequency that's preferred based upon its performance in the area. So for basically squawk and talk between three, four, or five vehicles, upper and lower sideband are great for that purpose. Because it also means that you don't clutter up everybody else's signal while they're talking on, say, any of the standard CB frequencies. So that's kind of cool. You create a radio etiquette that is useful. Now if things go to hell in a hand cart, because their cell phones aren't working but they do have radios, progressively upper and lower sideband would become busier. Because let's think about it this way. We had 29 channels, right? Well, we had 23 channels, forgive me. Regular CB, and it got so busy with everybody wanting to get on the radio that they gave us additional frequencies and we had 40 channels. Even with 40 channels at the height of CB interest, we had a lot of activity. And it was non-stop. So there's where Upper and Lower Sideband came in. And originally, Upper and Lower Sideband were add-ons that were created by radio geeks so they could do just exactly what we're talking about. You could flick a switch and all of a sudden you were talking in your own world. Well, you know, I tried your, you know, what you would usually say is like, well, we're on channel 11. Go to 11. I'm going to go to 11. Go lower. You know, hit the switch to the, turn the switch to the left, push the switch to the left, and all of a sudden, you're gone. And then you'd switch over, you hit your button too, and all of a sudden you're talking to each other. It might be a little nasally, a little, but not much. but it was still clear enough that you could easily receive the signal. Now later on, again, people began to work with the sideband, upper and lower sideband, and were quite successful with it in the commercial frequency end. But the one thing that, because activity on cell phone died down, or for you to be a cell phone, on CB died down because cell phones came up, the sideband is in this urgent for everybody. So the neat thing is there's a lot of room right now, but it's like surfing the radio waves, guys. As things get more intense and more active with certain pieces of equipment, you would find that very quickly the activity mushroomed up and down the bandwidth and also mushroomed left and right of the primary band, the primary signal, which is what upper and lower side band do. So it's good to have it, but it's not essential. I mean, we talk about the duck boxes, they don't have that. They just have straight CB, 40 channels. Go ahead. Well, the FR-S, they got their special little channels there on some of these FR-S radios. And like I was saying, the directions say you have to have a license to even use them. But are these channels that are what sideband CB are? I mean, what are these? These license-only channels on these FRS radios, what are those? Is it shortwave radio channels? It's another element that is considered commercial. You're actually paying for that service is what you're doing. And by licensing, you're paying for a service, whereas the others are open or public frequency. There was a whole process with FRS where, again, it was going to kind of parallel the, well, it did parallel to a degree, the cell phone systems. But the idea was they were going to make FRS like an alternate to that. Cell phone technology is so demanding that while FRS standard talk, which is really what cell phones originally only did, remember? It didn't kick off the way they expected, the way they were hoping. Still popular for a lot of people who don't need a lot of bells and whistles though. So it varies depending on where you are as far as what you're going to hear on a frequency counter from those frequencies. I've noticed around, for instance, Oklahoma City, a lot of activity on those frequencies. I've noticed when we've been down towards Knoxville, Kentucky, a lot of people on the pay-to-play frequencies, so to speak, as much as they were on the standard FRS open band. Now, I have found... A lot of traffic in both categories, mostly the farther west you go. East of the Mississippi it's busy here and there. But west of the Mississippi, the FRS radios have become really, really popular as a handheld alternative to the CB for local metropolitan areas. And a poor man's cell phone. If all this fails, if you can't afford a cell phone because you're already dearer, poor. FRS radios, if you've got a little grid of people who are all cooperative, do just as well, but without that fee. Unless you go the pay for play frequencies. Now, they actually did this with, oh hell, there's a whole bunch of different radio technology where they were doing this as a split. They had to offer so much in the way of over the counter and then the other rest had to be licensed or regulated and also Typically it's the cleaner frequencies, the cleaner elements on that particular bit of bandwidth on the overall radio spectrum. Remember I've talked about this before. Most everything that's made public are the junk channels. Even CB, if you pay attention, and I've told you, I've mentioned this many times, there are no band frequencies where you can talk across the country on CB with no linear amplifier, and it's like you're in the room with a person. It's unbelievable. And those are the frequencies we don't have on our radios. Now you can tweak the radio and build it up and do it. And you end up with about 300 channels on your radio with a CB. The problem is, again, getting people to do the work and or that know how to do it right. But there are a few out there, and there's some that are listening right now because they do it for us. And almost everything else, I don't care, 2 meter, The same is true with any of the old Civil Defense 10 meters. There's a whole bunch of little holes in the available frequencies where they kept them blocked. Let me give you another example of that. If you have a CB radio and you go from channel 1 to channel 23, you're in a very narrow element of one part of the radio spectrum. But when you go to 24, you will find that the frequency that you just went to is not side by side in a natural extension of channel 23. They're actually a step up the meter, as they say. And this is because the frequencies that would have been the next logical choice are part of that select frequency and bandwidth that is cherry. In other words, no static, no background noise, no habit to adjust everything. Sounds real quiet to the point where, again, when the person talks, you're actually thinking they might be like right there across the room for you, right there at the kitchen table with you. Well, those frequencies were jumped over in favor of 24 through 40 that we got, which are junk frequencies. Now, they work, and we make them work because we have to tweak them with technology to accomplish the mission. And we still accept a certain amount of background noise and static and interruption. It's even on almost every piece of equipment, as I pointed out, if you read the little details on the label on the back of your radios and gear. Guys, it says this equipment is restricted and must be willing to receive and send a certain amount of background noise, static, slash interference. Well, why? Well, because the frequencies they chose and the technology that they've limited. It's not that it can't be found. In fact, this is one of the things about radio I've talked about for years too, is that first of all, radio geeks on the one hand are lamenting because they're a fewer and fewer radio operators. It's like pilots. Okay, the average age of the American private pilot out there now is what, around 54 or 55? Actually, I got somebody that's a pilot around the corner here who can tell me real quick. But they're lamenting because, well, what it comes down to is flying a plane has become so stinking expensive, but also because of this clickishness going on instead of sharing the knowledge and promoting the way they should, like Civil Air Patrol doesn't. Which it doesn't, it should, but it doesn't. We're going to see a major wall and falling off of pilots if we don't get people motivated. Radio signal communication is the same way. And the thing is, it's not just plug and play. I'm talking about actually getting into radio and becoming a radio geek. It doesn't have to be your only thing that you're doing. It can be a neat little side hobby. You know, we need to be able to lift the hood and play with what's underneath it. And really the radios haven't changed that much. There are microprocessors and everything, but understand that almost every radio we're working with, that particular part of the board could be done away with. Most of the processors actually have to do with synthesizing the sound. So, the next time you look at this and then it goes to normal and then you're like, instead of it, you know, whining or you see this, you have this drift. This is especially true with shortwave radios. The new microprocessors, the synthesizers help to more efficiently walk back and forth between the upper and lower sideband leg and the primary signal so that you get a much cleaner, consistent, You can actually hear what's being said, you don't have to try and reinterpret it, and that's what the processor does. It actually works as an extension of your brain before you ever got there. Right. When I was looking at getting a license, a radio, a Sheraway radio, I mean you have to learn Morse code. I mean it's like this license is like... Yeah, but you don't have to have a license to have the radio. No, but you got to, well you know what I'm saying. Right now you can get a nice Kenwood, like oh god, something called Kenwood, the abysmal beast of maintenance. And then on the other hand I got people listening who go, yeah Mark Kenwoods, they're great. We've covered this a few years back, but we have a touchdown again. There's a lot of nice equipment that can be carried in your rig that are full band, full spectrum radios, and easily could be hooked up so they'd be back in your sleeper. and if need be you could in an emergency talk to the world. Hey guys. There's no reason not to. Oh you don't? Right, they've got the new amateurs entry license. I didn't know that a while. I've already gone and taken it. It's going to be tricky. I think so. Usually when you're looking at it, being a mobile rig to be able to hear what's going on, you don't even have to talk. Remember a lot of what you're going to be doing is silently collecting. Exactly. other transmitters go silent. It's like everything else, you'll see progressively a sliding towards that technology. It's not an effort just to win if things go hell in hand. I've got a quick question. I've done some batteries and stuff that I've never used. Would they still be pretty much factory new? Do you mean rechargeables? Oh, they should be good. Yeah. They probably have bled their charge, but that varies. We've had a discussion about that, but this morning and then tomorrow in a few years, it's amazing how well the nickel hydride and even the older style conventional nycads can store it. It's purely a matter of when they were made and as long as they weren't bounced around a lot. And even if they were, they'll take a charge again, but they, it's, it's, it's. I've got a bunch of them. I've just moved on the same subject. They're brand new in the box. They've never been charged. I've got them on standby. I want to check out all these. Yeah, in fact, that is a good point. Again, all these guys, they've got a couple of different rechargeable batteries, teals that they may or may not be out of in your area. You got to check to make sure that there wasn't a run on them, but hey, they still got to take advantage of it. God bless the Republic. We shall prevail, ladies and gentlemen. The Empire's on the run. We'll take it over. You guys have a good evening, and we'll see you tomorrow. Weapons Wednesday. Bye-bye.